Combine Multiple RSS Feeds With Yahoo Pipes

Mike just emailed me asking for a way to combine all of his author feeds from all websites he is writing for to publish all of his articles as a single feed on his Facebook page. There are lots of services out there that can combine RSS feeds into one feed. This can be handy for a variety of reasons. You may want to use it for publication reasons, just like Mike did. It can also be handy for a chronological overview, for instance by combining authority feeds about a specific topic.

Yahoo Pipes offers one of the easiest options to combine multiple feeds into one. You do need a Yahoo account to make use of Yahoo Pipes but that is the only requirement.

Visit the Yahoo Pipes website and log in with your Yahoo account, or create a new account either directly on site, or by connecting via a Facebook or Google account.

Yahoo Pipes basically works by combining elements on the right. You drag and drop elements on the workplace, configure them and combine them to create something.

For combining multiple RSS feeds into one, we need to do the following. Drag and drop the Site Feed module to the workplace and copy paste the first feed url into the form. You can add additional feeds by clicking on the + icon next to url. Repeat the step for all feeds that you want to combine.

You need to click on Operators now in the left sidebar menu to drag and drop sort to the workplace. Now connect Fetch Feed and Sort by clicking on the blue circle below the Fetch Feed module and connecting it to the blue circle on top of the Sort module.

Now click on the blank field on the left side of in ascending order and select item.pubDate to sort all articles that get posted on all sites by publication date.

Connect Sort to Pipe Output and select save at the top to save the new Pipes.

Enter a name for the pipe and select Save. Click the Run Pipe link afterwards at the top of the screen. This opens a new page that lists the output of the pipe. You find links to snag the pipe as an RSS feed on that page.

Just copy and paste that RSS link into your RSS reader of choice. And there you go, you are now subscribed to one feed that combines multiple RSS feeds.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Monday April 25, 2011 -
Tags:combine rss, rss, rss feed, yahoo pipes

Responses so far:

1. paulo oliveira says:

   April 26, 2011 at 12:39 am

   great article, Martin. If possible, publish more tutorials on Yahoo Pipes, please!

   Reply
2. SFdude says:

   April 27, 2011 at 2:14 am

   This was good, short & clear example!

   Write another similar article,
   with an example of “Fech Data”, in Yahoo Pipes…

   Thanks!

   Reply
3. Jelbee says:

   June 25, 2011 at 6:03 am

   my site have two rss: one for the articles and video. Thanks for sharing this it saves me from trouble.

   Reply
4. rstarter says:

   September 20, 2011 at 8:18 am

   Hi Martin,
   Is it possible to make the pubDate to be visible just under the feed headline?

   Regards,
   Mannyee

   Reply
   • Martin Brinkmann says:

     September 20, 2011 at 9:11 am

     Good question, I cannot really answer that unfortunately. Has been a long time since I last played around with Yahoo Pipes.

     Reply
5. Jonathan says:

   September 25, 2011 at 4:43 pm

   Very useful! Thanks

   Unfortunately I want to combine 70 RSS feeds (student blogs I want to see in one go – http://changebydesign.wordpress.com/ ) but Pipes seems to limit me to 10 at a time.
   I thought about creating a feed of ten, a feed of another ten, and then combining those… but it doesn’t work.
   Any thoughts on how to go beyond the ten feed limit?

   Reply
6. rascasse83 says:

   December 17, 2011 at 4:33 pm

   To have more than 10 use multiple Fetch Feeds and connect them to a UNION Operator.

   Reply